Recently I decided to re-watch the classic 1968 horror film "Rosemary's Baby" (dir. Roman Polanski). To prepare myself for the film, I decided to do some research...Only to discover some very disturbing incidents which have deemed some to mark "Rosemary's Baby" a "cursed" film.
Firstly, let's look at the film's ties with Mark David Chapman and John Lennon's assassination. A large majority of the film's action occurs in the apartment block where Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes) inhabit with their creepy next-door neighbors (Ruth Gordon & Sidney Blackmer). In the film this building is called Bramford which is said to have a dark history involving witchcraft and black magic. The building's actual name is "The Dakota", which according to Wikipedia is a:
"a co-operative apartment building at 1 West 72nd street on the Upper West side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The Dakota was constructed between 1880 and 1884 in the Renaissance Revival style and was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh for businessman Edward Cabot Clark."
Although, I can't find any evidence that indicates that The Dakota is as sinister as "Bramford", a disturbing incident did occur in 1980 when one of it's residents, John Lennon (yes, that one from The Beatles) was shot dead outside the building. Lennon's killer was Mark David Chapman, a man who had became obsessed with the book "Catcher in the Rye". Much speculation has been had regarding whether the book has any connections with the CIA program, MK Ultra (something which is worth diving down the rabbit hole to explore). Regardless of whether or not you believe that Chapman had been part of MK Ultra, there is no denying the fact that he was a deeply disturbed individual (it's worth noting that since 2000, he has been denied parole 11 times).
The whole Chapman and Lennon incident could simply be passed off as being a mere coincidence but of course, it's not just this one incident that has deemed "Rosemary's Baby" as a having a curse.
A year after the release of "Rosemary's Baby" Polanski lost his wife Sharon Tate and their unborn son in one of Hollywood's most notorious murders. On the night of August 9th 1969, Tate along with 4 of her friends were brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family.
Those familiar to the Tate/Manson case will know that Charles Manson was apparently a huge fan of "The Beatles" believing that the songs included on their album "The White Album" had hidden messages regarding an up-coming race war. He called this war "Helter Skelter" and demanded that his followers known as "The Family" prepare themselves for the up-coming apocalypse. If you wish to read more about this then a link can be found here.
What is even more bizarre is that fact that Tate was desperate to score the part of Rosemary in "Rosemary's Baby" and according to an article by Variety,
She had gunned hard for the lead role in Rosemary's Baby, but Paramount cast Mia Farrow. Tate instead loitered around the set, appearing uncredited like a ghost in the background of Rosemary's young-people-only party scene and, say some, becoming increasingly obsessed with the occult.
With the death of his wife, Polanski seemed to be more and more demented. The darkness of Hollywood finally consumed and in 1977, Polanski was arrested and charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. As a part of the plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of unlawful sex with a minor. A year later, upon discovering that the judge planned to reject his plea deal and impose a prison term instead of probation, he fled to Paris.
As a result, Polanski remains a fugitive from the U.S. criminal justice system to this very day. Was this perverse darkness always inside Polanski or was it something that occurred due to the Tate/Manson incident? Either way, it doesn't excuse him for his crimes.
Polanski wasn't the only crew member to suffer from bad luck. Mia Farrow was served divorce papers on set when her then-husband Frank Sinatra who was apparently upset by the fact that she'd decided to do "Rosemary's Baby" and not do a film with him. Like most Hollywood romances, there was a large age gap between the two- he was 50 and she was 21. Once married, Sinatra was keen for Farrow to do less and less acting.
Mia Farrow's bad luck is nothing in comparison to some of her other crew members. In another disturbing turn of events, the film's composer Krzysztof Komedam fell off a cliff in Los Angeles and suffered a cerebral haemorrhage just months after completing his work on the film. According to sources, Komedam was actually pushed off an escarpment by writer Marek Hłasko during a drinking party. After the fall, Komedam went into a coma and languished for some time before finally passing away. What is most disturbing is the fact that Komedam's death mirrors that of Rosemary's friend Hutch in the film.
Ill-health also plagued the film's producer William Castle. After the film's release, he experienced kidney stones which meant he had to undergo surgery. In Castle's autobiography, he claimed that during surgery he began to hallucinate scenes from the film and even shouted, “Rosemary, for God's sake drop that knife!” He wrote that after getting the recognition he desired he "no longer cared. I was at home, very frightened of Rosemary's Baby."
Castle wasn't the only producer to be hit by a string of bad luck. Robert Evans also experienced his fair share of trouble. Evans was charged with trafficking coke in 1980 and received a suspended prison sentence. As part of his plea deal, he got to make an anti-drug commercial (pretty ironic, huh?). However, only 3 short years later, the producer would get caught up in the murder of Roy Radin and the "Cotton Club" case. Despite two witnesses testifying that Evans was involved in the case, he was later cleared of the charges. In 1993, he told The New York Times, “I had 10 years of a horrific life, Kafkaesque. There were nights I cried myself to sleep.”
Lastly, Ira Levin, the author who wrote "Rosemary's Baby", suffered from his own series of bad luck incidents. Firstly, he never quite reached the same level of success after the release of "Rosemary's Baby". A year after the film's release, his wife left him and he came under immense fire from the Catholic Church.
Regardless of whether you believe in curses or not, there's definitely a lot of weird coincidences and controversies that surround "Rosemary's Baby" and it's for this reason that the film remains so unnerving to this day.
I wonder what you all think regarding whether or not this film is cursed?
Please check out my podcast "Uncensored Cinefiles" where I discuss the film's strange connections in further detail:
